Non-diabetic Hyperglycemia and Some of Its Correlates in ICU Hospitalized Patients Receiving Enteral Nutrition.

Introduction: Hyperglycemia is a common occurrence in critically ill patients, and its prevalence in patients receiving nutritional support is much higher than in other patients. The non-diabetic form is associated with more undesirable outcomes. This study was performed to determine the prevalence of non-diabetic hyperglycemia and its correlates in patients receiving enteral nutrition.

Material and Methods: This cross-sectional study was performed between March and December 2015. Seven hundred forty eight (748) patients were reviewed to see if they met the inclusion criteria. After random sequence numbering, 414 patients who were eligible for further assessment and data gathering were selected. Hyperglycemia was defined as the blood glucose levels higher than either 126 mg/dL, in the fasting state, or 180 mg/dL, in a random state. Blood glucose was measured by an ACCU-CHECK glucometer (Roche diagnostics, Mannheim, Germany) three times, after ICU admission, in both fasting and random state. A pre-prepared form was used to extract data from hospital records. Data analysis was performed by SPSS 21 software.

Results: In this group of hospitalized patients, the prevalence of non-diabetic hyperglycemia was 14/49 (60/414). In the hyperglycemic subgroup, mean FBS was 228.00±36.42, mean random BS was 183.19±43.94 and mean blood sugar on the first day of hospitalization was 203.60 ± 60.79. The mean age of patients was 56.64±19.79 years and the mean duration of hospitalization was 19.24±15.33 days. There was no significant relationship between enteral nutrition feeding volume and hyperglycemia. Majorly, patients aged above 60 years were hyperglycemic. The prevalence was higher in men than in women. Most patients were internal cases, but with the highest prevalence of hyperglycemia in surgical patients.

Conclusions: Since among different studied variables just diagnosed disease and the level of provided calorie showed significant differences between subgroup categories, so it can be suggested that designing on-time appropriate management programs based them can be effective on the administration of non-diabetic hyperglycemia and its undesirable consequences in such patients.